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London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

btp.police.uk

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Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#151

Post by krisbolton »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #55
steve_gh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a technology. What you could do with it, and what you should do with it are completely different things. If you follow the links there is a lot of information about the trial, including a whole series of documents identifying the legal framework that authorises LFR, including rationale under GDPR, Data Protection etc. Of course, this technology could be used for bad purposes. But within a democracy, policing hap…

The UK stopped being a democracy a long time ago. In the UK if you keep your mouth shut during an investigation, it may harm your defense. There is zero right against self-incrimination. It is also the place where you can be jailed for not providing the PIN to your phone. I could go on.

This just isn't true... you've heard of "no comment" right? And the ability for the police to invoke the requirement for you to provide your PIN is behind the tests of specific legislation. You're not automatically required to provide it.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#152

Post by windowliker »

SoftTalker wrote: post #148
windowliker wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oyster is still anonymous, in the sense that no details are required to buy a card, and it can be topped up using cash. The cards can be returned or disposed of as necessary. But as you say, it knows your movements at least in so far as your entry and exit point in the system, with a timestamp, though you can use a separate card for each if you don't mind paying the full fare that gets charged when a journey is 'inco…

If people would not steal stuff from shops, the shops would not need cameras. We get the society our behavior creates.

Do the cameras stop people stealing?

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#153

Post by constantius »

dofm wrote: post #125
constantius wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> based on myth and dramatisation > We have had generations of terror threats to and attacks on our railway system, trains, railway stations I think your take might be based on myth and dramatisation too, as well as a misunderstanding of what the purpose of surveillance is (it's not about protecting children, or trains). And agree with sibling about Ireland: the Troubles would have been solved by getting the hell out…

> I think your take might be based on myth and dramatisation too, You are arguing that terrorist attacks on public transport in the UK are mythical or dramatised? > I invite you to check how the English government is reacting to independentist movements in Scotland and Ireland post-Brexit if you think they're happy to let people be. This is just a very weird sentence to read; surprised it wasn't weird to write.

> You are arguing that terrorist attacks on public transport in the UK are mythical or dramatised?

What kind of question is that? Did I ask you if you're calling cameras in the UK mythical?

Same as what you said about London, I'm arguing you're dramatising the dire threat of terrorism on the good people sitting in the tube.

In a thread where we're discussing the systematically verified risks of a slippery slope of surveillance measures and the introduction of extremely invasive surveillance in the tube, clutching your pearls about the mean terrorists threatening the public transports for literal generations is a ridiculous exaggeration that carries the same value as "think of the children". How are cameras going to protect you? Do you think they see people's intentions? Even the police didn't use the terrorism excuse for this.

Sorry for the tone, but this wilful misunderstanding of my comments and your statement about the Irish being to blame for the Troubles make it difficult to engage in a gentlemanly manner.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#154

Post by throw-the-towel »

steve_gh wrote: post #95
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you are saying is this is what you want as citizens, to be surveilled and tracked by police 24/7?

My point is that the technology exists, for good or ill, and we cannot put the genie back in the bottle. What we can do, and should do as a society, is decide on how that technology should be used. And that means regulating it, in the same way that we regulate other technologies. For example, we regulate cars. Not just who can use them, but how they have to be constructed too. And we also place limits on how the auth…

> the capabilities and resources that the police have to track us 24/7 are an order of magnitude less than Google or Meta has.

This will be a good argument when Google or Meta are able to arrest you.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#155

Post by windowliker »

bobthepanda wrote: post #146
windowliker wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oyster is still anonymous, in the sense that no details are required to buy a card, and it can be topped up using cash. The cards can be returned or disposed of as necessary. But as you say, it knows your movements at least in so far as your entry and exit point in the system, with a timestamp, though you can use a separate card for each if you don't mind paying the full fare that gets charged when a journey is 'inco…

you don't even need all of that to track people. there was a bit of a kerfuffle where a dataset that literally only contained the start, end and time, and some deanonymized data of NYC taxi rides was successfully deanonymized and used to track celebrities. Most people have fairly sparse, unique travel patterns, and so armed with only a few known paparazzi photos you could accurately derive their whole travel history.…

Yes, but as I said it is possible to use a separate ID for entry and exit, so unless they were willing to perform a CCTV trawl then your entire journey could not be assessed. The penalty for this kind of anonymity is paying top fare for entry and exit, so only a very rich tube user could bear the cost. The thing that got people to use Oyster in the first place was 'discounted' prices, as in they bumped the price for a paper ticket when Oyster cards were introduced and kept the old prices for Oyster only journeys. Make of that what you will. Paper tickets are still available as of 2026 last time I checked.

There was a similar data trawl when Boris bikes were introduced, and some of the information gleaned from that was quite hilarious but I can't find a link because it was from the old world and now lost in enshitted search.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#156

Post by stronglikedan »

samudrijan wrote: post #141
jambalaya8 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All due respect but I am not totally against police dealing with protests. I am against this Orwellian surveillance stuff. If you want to police so people can deal with day to day things like go shopping without being harassed or freaked out I am all for that. But do it the old fashioned way.

So flash bang grenades to peaceful protesters skulls is okay? Shooting rubber bullets at peaceful protesters eyes is okay?

As usual, it depends. "Peaceful" is a very subjective term. Like the mostly peaceful but fiery protests in Wisconsin.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#157

Post by mattlondon »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #144
fragmede wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The failure mode is incorrect detections. If the automated system says person 1 from camera 1 is the same as person 1 in camera 2, and then extrapolate out to 10,000 people and cameras, and then don't get it wrong. Because the BBC is never going to let you live it down if the person they arrested for stealing kinda sorta looks like the guy that actually did the stealing.

Jean Charles de Menezes never got as far as being arrested. The police observed him enter an Underground station, followed him onto a tube train, and put seven bullets into his head. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Jean_Charles_de_Men...

Perhaps facial recognition would have saved him? It's not like humans are 100% accurate as this demonstrates

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#158

Post by triceratops »

kypro wrote: post #42

For what it's worth, as a Brit, I assure you no one cares about this, and it's likely that most people, if asked, would support it. The UK doesn't value liberty for liberty's sake like the US does. In the US there seems to be this notion that freedom is a universal good, where as in the UK people are quite comfortable with liberties being revoked if it means they feel safer or fewer people are doing things they don't…

> UK political debate today largely just consists of debates about what to ban next...gambling

The UK is banning gambling? Really?

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